Doors: 6pm, Music: 7-10pm | Online Pre-sale: $10 | Door: $15
About Isabeau Waia'u Walker:
Multicultural Kānaka Maoli singer songwriter, Isabeau Waia’u Walker, has had to get creative to attempt the question of genre: “bright gloom,” “joy adjacent;” “island of broken, demented toys.” Hailing from her homeland Hawaii and having spent the latter half of her life in Oregon’s Pacific Northwest. Unless touring with Y La Bamba, in which she sings backup vocals, her feet and roots are always close to the shores of the Pacific Ocean (yearning for and pulled by her packs). Experience, observations and negotiations with race, culture, gender and class are inextricably woven into her purpose and product. Songs of love. Songs of community and fight, of life and self. She lives in attractive vulnerability and sincere humility despite the power of her performances and songs. An early retirement as a full time secondary school teacher in 2019 has allowed her to tour, play local shows, and record more, releasing her EP, Better Metric, in 2020, then her first LP, Body, in 2022, with engineer, bandmate and friend Ryan Oxford at The Center for Sound, Light and Color. Since those releases she’s unsurprisingly caught the attention of and has been featured in and on several publications, podcasts and programs such as OPB, Live Wire Radio, Vortex Music Magazine, Willamette Week, KEXP. Isabeau dedicated the last year and a half to the release of her third record, an LP titled Heavyweight, out October 2024.
About the Heavyweight release:
Heavyweight is personal; the soundtrack for a heavy heart shored up with gratitude and tenderness. It is a gentle hand over yours, a head resting lightly on your shoulder, a mutual scream into the abyss. Isabeau writes to satisfy an internal tension. Her music is Bright Gloom, joy adjacent songs and stories from The Land of Broken and Demented Toys. Recorded by Ryan Oxford at The Center for Sound, Light, and Color in Portland, Oregon, Heavyweight owns up to flaws, admits to confusion and confesses failure but it is not a surrender. In contrast to her previous LP, Body, these songs are her individual bout with love, sacrifice and loss. It is the wily smile and bruised cheekbone still standing in the next round; the bottoming out and a heartfelt, heartfull return. Heavyweight marks the first time Isabeau has recorded a project with a band, with her band of weird and talented brothers. Having the whole gang present throughout the process made room for real time collaboration. Her songs found their most mature form in her band community. Ryan and Isabeau have carved out a new groove in their artistic alliance and their friendship hosts a safe space to orchestrate songs as they mean to be. She is a lyric forward songwriter with stories reminding that while the worst has happened it didn’t take you out...if anything, it emboldened your heart, your love, your resolve. You are now sharper while more tender. Heavyweight is personal, but for all who have met grief. Heavyweight is hers, but also yours. These songs can hold your weight. “Take your heaviness / and give it back to the earth’s own weight / the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Poetry of Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus.